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AMERICAN CINEMA PAPERS PRINT ARCHIVE 2015 Click Here for: CANNES 2015 – READING PALMS Click Here for: RAOULS OF ENGAGEMENT	CANNES – 2015 ALWAYS ACT! YOUNG AT ART by Harlan Kennedy Old is the new young. That much was apparent – gloriously and goldenly – at the 68^th Cannes Film Festival. Screen actors who make it to 68 themselves or beyond are, now more than ever, in with a shout at the best roles. More than a shout, a banshee’d ululation. Is this the shape of cinema to come? Look around. Sir Mike Caine and Harvey Keitel, both a country mile past the spring chicken age, had the fest’s best double act in Paolo Sorrentino’s YOUTH. (The title might be ironic). Gerard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert, yesterday’s young bloods of French film, were today’s Darby and Joan in VALLEY OF LOVE: Guillaume Nicloux’s transoceanic aging-couple drama set in – catch another ironist’s gib at age – Death Valley. And then look at the movies about ever-so-slightly-younger people being chased by time’s winged Cabriolet: from Woody Allen’s IRRATIONAL MAN (Joaquin Phoenix as a menopausal college professor turned wannabe murderer) to Asif Kapadia’s pop doc AMY. Kapadia homes in on the last days of jazz-soul yowler Amy Winehouse, a British singer-songwriter whose fame and greatness surely lay in her making every song sound as if it might be her last. She was a soothsayer of eternity even at 23, old in the best and deepest sense. One of my favourite oldies-beat-youngies offerings was the prizewinner of the main Cannes sideshow ‘Un Certain Regard.’ No one quite believed it when Cannes fest director Thierry Fremaux opened the envelope. “Grimur Hakanarson’s RAMS (HRUTEN)” he declaimed. Not a bookie’s favourite. But then again, why not? This nutty Icelandic saga, about two old brothers living in hostile neighbourliness while rearing rival sheep flocks, melted everyone’s cockles. Even though the film is set in a country where a cup of cocoa freezes solid if you set it on a table, there are warming hilarity and humanity galore. Each brother looks as if he’s stepped from the Old Testament: gnarled features, vengeance-sparkling eyes, white beards to wag at the world. But the story, born of sibling enmity, ranges towards love and redemption across a flurry of plots, subplots and counterplots. The ending, amid the mother of hilltop snowstorms, is moving proof that clocks can be set back restoratively – and with them youth’s idealism and forgiveness – even in a family where time’s moving finger seems to have frozen in mid-writ. Other “let’s celebrate the seniors” flicks on the fringe included Arnaud Despleschin’s MY GOLDEN DAYS (TROIS SOUVENIRS DE MA JEUNESSE), a prizewinner in the Directors Fortnight, and Woody’s wonderwork, shown out of competition. Mr Allen has been at the philosophy shelves again. The film adds about 20 years to Joaquin Phoenix’s appearance as his cranky lecturer cranks on about Schopenauer et al, while trying to rejuvenate himself by romancing the Stone. That’s Emma Stone. She’s Lolita as a college girl. It’s dark and feisty fun. Matthieu Amalric, a lovable French star now approaching that certain age himself, is the framing figure in MY GOLDEN DAYS. He looks back in extended flashback at his jeunesse dore. Here’s the thing about growing old – our growing old – with a star we like. He or she is much more interesting than his or her younger alter ego on screen, here played by Fred Frogg, even if the latter is easier on the eye. Amalric has become a clatter of quirks; a bible of blinks, tics and charismatic beckonings. He looks more than ever like Roman Polanski. And he’s terrific in near-actionless movies where his face and voice provide the action. Remember THE BUTTERFLY AND THE DIVING BELL? Understandably he’s been Desplechin’s favourite self-stand-in for 15 years, ever since this director made the young and nicely titled MA VIE SEXUELLE (COMME JE ME SUIS DISPUTE..) – MY SEX LIFE (HOW I’VE BEEN ARGUING WITH MYSELF…) Growing old. It’s often best to do it disgracefully. Take Gerard Depardieu. The incontinent swaggerer of life, art and French cinema, a true sacred monster, is now grown as bloated as Silenus. (Didn’t I spot him in a Poussin painting the other day?) He was last seen at Cannes banging everything in sight in “the DSK movie”, Abel Ferrara’s gonzo take on the sex feats of the former IMF chief. Now, more chaste and sober but still built like a human blimp and still exultantly hogging airspace, he is the eye magnet of VALLEY OF LOVE. The beautiful Isabelle Huppert – only she could compete – matches his acting quirk for quirk, if not kilo for kilo, in a potty plot about an aging French mom and pop rendezvousing with a successfully suicided gay son. The boy left a note to meet him in Death Valley, Nevada. So they honour, daily, the appointed time and stipulated spots, till finally – no, to say more would spoil your fun, assuming you can find any (I could) in watching Gerry and Izzy existentially implode amid picture postcard western scenery. Even Gabriel Byrne grew old and watchable in Cannes. He’s the only watchable item in Joachim Trier’s LOUDER THAN BOMBS, a Norwegian-directed co-prod – more like a cattle prod – aiming to electrify us with family problems and eschatological posers in a weirdly multinational USA. Yes, another WMUSA. For Death Valley read non-denominational American small town. Gabriel Byrne, greyhaired, conflicted and quietly riveting, tries to steer to wisdom and spiritual adjustment two dysfunctioning teenage sons. Their mum and his mate has died, a famous photojournalist played by, hooray, yes again, the dazzling Izzy Huppert. She must have commuted daily by the milk plane from Nevada. The film is great at least for her and him. More proof that age cannot wither, nor customs and immigration stale, two stars jet-setting into a second stardom. But yes, it has to be, for the Palme d’Or to wrinklies made radiant, to old-timers spurning Alzheimers, to supernovas refusing to become black holes, Mike Caine and Harve Keitel in YOUTH. We’re used to seeing seagulls over Sorrentino. Director Paolo has started catching boats big-time, an Italian regista voyaging the world to make, last time round, an aging-rocker odyssey in America starring Sean Penn (THIS MUST BE PLACE), this time an all-human-life fable set in a Swiss hotel spa with flashbacks to UK, USA, U-name-it. Mike and Harve play, respectively, a semi-retired conductor and a fists-not-yet-in-the-sprocket filmmaker. They muse on life past, love past and present, and death approaching over the Julie Andrews hills. (I know, that’s Austria. Same difference). Late in the movie another golden oldie joins them: no less than Jane Fonda. You recognize her not so much from the face, a dazzle of clues to an identity you can’t at first grasp, than from the voice, that enchanting crisp drawl. She got it from dad Henry. He was one of the greatest, most lovable human goldies Hollywood ever gave us. (As long as you didn’t see THE SWARM). Will Jane follow? Will we see more? So the curtain came down on Cannes, or was drawn around the stellar patients while night nurse came on duty to tuck up their beds. But of course there is no such thing as lights out in cinema. When a room dims for cinephiles, that’s when life starts. In the same way, neither age nor time nor mortality can rob stars of their stardom. They will be always with us: if not as walking wounded in the march of years, then as eternal youths in the Tithonus recycle machine of movieging. *Note to readers. Tithonus is the mythic guy who contracted with the gods never to grow old. He lived a long time, stayed at various deluxe international spa hotels, and finally founded Hollywood. He now dwells retired in Beverly Hills, twin town of Cannes. His telephone number is unlisted. The estate is heavily guarded. Don’t bother him. Or me. COURTESY T.P. MOVIE NEWS. WITH THANKS TO THE AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE FOR THEIR CONTINUING INTEREST IN WORLD CINEMA. ©HARLAN KENNEDY. All rights reserved